Chuck Rosenberg, the new acting administrator of the US Drug Enforcement Administration: “If you want me to say that marijuana’s not dangerous, I’m not going to say that because I think it is. Do I think it’s as dangerous as heroin?

Just a thought: if synthetic, lab-brewed subsitutes for marijuana turning victims into vegetables and sending emergency responders into a panic, as this horrifying New York Times feature on 'Spike' indicates, guys, maybe we could think about just legalizing actual marijuana, which does not kill people or turn them into zombies.

You pretty much *cannot overdose* (not to the point where it kills you or causes you to go bonkers forever) with Cannabis sativa.

Syracuse, where I’ve lived almost my entire life, has struggled with synthetic drugs before. William Harper, a local businessman and two-time Republican candidate for City Council, moonlighted as the kingpin of bath salts in New York for two years before the Drug Enforcement Administration took him down in 2011. Was there a spike kingpin out there now, flooding the street with a bad batch? Perhaps, but similar outbreaks occurred in several states along the Gulf of Mexico in April, and the American Association of Poison Control Centers reports that between January and June, the nationwide number of synthetic marijuana ‘‘exposures’’ — that is, reported contact with the substance, which usually means an adverse reaction — had already surpassed totals for 2013 and 2014, and that 15 people died from such exposure. Maybe there was a larger cause.

Every state has banned synthetic cannabinoids, the chemicals in spike that impart the high. Although the active ingredients primarily come from China, where commercial labs manufacture them to order like any other chemical, spike itself is produced domestically. Traffickers spray the chemicals on dried plant material and seal the results in foil pouches; these are then sold on the Internet or distributed to stores across the country, which sell them sometimes under the counter, as in Syracuse, or sometimes right by the cash register, depending on local laws. Unlike marijuana, cocaine and other naturally occurring drugs, synthetic cannabinoids can be tweaked on a molecular level to create novel, and arguably legal, drugs.

Since 2008, when authorities first noted the presence of synthetic cannabinoids in ‘‘legal marijuana’’ products, periodic surges in overdoses have often coincided with new releases, and emergency doctors have had to learn on the fly how to treat them. This latest surge is notable for the severity of symptoms: seizures, extreme swings in heart rate and blood pressure, kidney and respiratory failure, hallucinations. Many patients require such enormous doses of sedatives that they stop breathing and require intubation, and yet they still continue to struggle violently. Eric Kehoe, a shift commander at the Rural Metro ambulance company that employs Darbee and Drake, said bath-salts overdoses are easier to deal with. ‘‘You might find them running naked down the middle of the street,’’ he said, but ‘‘you could talk them down. These people here — there’s no point. You can’t even reason with them. They’re just mute. They have this look about them that’s just like a zombie.’’

Although recreational marijuana is legal to grow and smoke in Oregon, it's not yet legal to sell. But that doesn't mean you can't give it away to 2,000 people, which is what Portland's Weed the People event did yesterday. The first festival of its kind in the U.S., people 21 and over were able to spend the day sampling free weed and everything weed-related.

The alcohol-free event lasted for seven hours, as attendees mulled around to test out smoking devices; relaxed on comfy chairs and listened to records in a “chill out area”; and waited in a line that wound through the inside of a warehouse to enter the “Grow Garden”, the highly secured and roped off area where they could pick up their free goodies.

The historic event was put on by growers and medical marijuana dispensaries (who can sell in Oregon to people with medical cards), and tickets to enter were $40.

The New York State Department of Health is selecting companies that may be given license to grow weed on farmland in Bethel, New York adjacent to the site of the legendary Woodstock Music Festival of 1969. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Legal recreational weed was in short supply in Washington this summer. Stores were charging as much a $25 a gram, including an effective tax rate of 44 percent. Now that weed is more plentiful, prices have dropped to about $15 a gram. Black market weed is still cheaper, though: $10 a gram.

The US government is analyzing data from what it claims is the biggest study on how pot affects how you drive. The participants in the study at the University of Iowa vaporized marijuana (smoke-free campus!), drank, both, or had a placebo and took the wheel of a driving simulator.

"When it comes to cannabis, it's a lot trickier than when it comes to alcohol," says Colorado State Trooper JJ Wolff. "I can't tell you if one joint is going to make you high to the point where you can't drive. That's a really hard question to answer at this point. ... "The safest thing to do right now: If you are going to drink any amount, don't drive. And if you are going to consume any amount of cannabis, don't drive."
"Feds test how stoned is too stoned to drive" (USA Today)

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra will perform a series of concerts where attendees are encouraged to smoke weed. The bring-your-own-cannabis concerts, called "Classically Cannabis: The High Note Series," are a collaboration with pro-pot producers Edible Events.

"We see ourselves as connecting classical music with all of Colorado," Colorado Symphony Orchestra director Jerry Kern told the Denver Post. "Part of our goal is to bring in a younger audience and a more diverse audience, and I would suggest that the patrons of the cannabis industry are both younger and more diverse than the patrons of the symphony orchestra."